Guild Wars 2

As quite a few people have said recently, balance is probably the best it’s been in quite a while. However, it is now quite perfect, yet.

That being said, current top issues in balance are: (in no particular order):

• Nightmare run. (6) Bonus is too strong. This is essentially a 0 counterplay feature. And I mean 0. This fear will proc through, blind, evade, or block.
  • Fix: make it blindable and blockable. Reduce base duration to 1.5s (down from 2.s)
• Might stacking is able to give classes with low stats but spammable might re-application too much power for little trade-off. Making celestial amulet even more effective of a choice for those classes.
  • Fix: reduce stats granted per stack of might to 25 (down from 35).

I think these 2 are the biggest class-unspecific issues in the game, and they both have very easy solutions.

strength rune/sigil nerf would be a better solution imo
also fire field duration

nerf max stack of might to 10 = problem bunkers doing stupid dmg is solved

agree on nightmare runes, some kind of counterplay besides to randomly have stab would be nice

I agree with nightmare runes… not sure about the might. I think 35 is fine.

What if battle granted 2 stacks of might instead of 3 and ele dagger 5 blast-finished at the end, rather than the beginning of the animation?

Reduce the might duration granted by battle sigils and blasting fire fields by half.

I don’t think addressing might alone will be nearly enough to bring eles back down though.

Also, boon removal needs to be far more accessible.

Mostly agree. Next thing to do would be to start improving underused specs imo.

DaveGan.8065:

Reduce the might duration granted by battle sigils and blasting fire fields by half.

I don’t think addressing might alone will be nearly enough to bring eles back down though.

Also, boon removal needs to be far more accessible.

that too… it is really dishearting when you manage to strip every buff but those 20 stacks of might

DaveGan.8065:

Reduce the might duration granted by battle sigils and blasting fire fields by half.

I don’t think addressing might alone will be nearly enough to bring eles back down though.

Also, boon removal needs to be far more accessible.

No.

For Nightmare runes, just cut it in half – kitten CD, 1 second fear.

SobeSoul.6910:

No.

Thanks for your bias and valuable contribution to this discussion!

For Nightmare runes, just make both duration and cd half of current version. Although it could be a bit too big nerf.

Mentioned the suggested might change months ago, aswell as a cut for air/fire sigil, so focusing together becomes more important and the ranger class can catch up.

DaveGan.8065:

SobeSoul.6910:

No.

Thanks for your bias and valuable contribution to this discussion!

Really?

You are the one who wants to literally nerf a class into the ground. If there’s any biasedness here, it’s on your part.

SobeSoul.6910:

DaveGan.8065:

SobeSoul.6910:

No.

Thanks for your bias and valuable contribution to this discussion!

Really?

You are the one who wants to literally nerf a class into the ground. If there’s any biasedness here, it’s on your part.

Either reducing might duration by a small percentage and/or lowering celestial amulet stats by a small percentage would do the trick easier, simpler, without destroying classes, or creating other balance problems.

I agree with OP with diagnosis but the suggested solution to might stacking is a huge overnerf and would also split the function of might between pvp and wvw and pve.

crunchyraisin.6054:

SobeSoul.6910:

DaveGan.8065:

SobeSoul.6910:

No.

Thanks for your bias and valuable contribution to this discussion!

Really?

You are the one who wants to literally nerf a class into the ground. If there’s any biasedness here, it’s on your part.

Either reducing might duration by a small percentage and/or lowering celestial amulet stats by a small percentage would do the trick easier, simpler, without destroying classes, or creating other balance problems.

I agree with OP with diagnosis but the suggested solution to might stacking is a huge overnerf and would also split the function of might between pvp and wvw and pve.

The guy I was replying to wants easier access to boon removal for a reason.

I mentioned in another thread replying to 5gauge my solution to might stacking would be to drop the power and condi increase from 35 to 25. Like Acandis says in the OP. I have no problem with might stacks getting shaved, but Eles are already susceptible to burst, and Cele Ele isn’t the only builds you have to think about.

SobeSoul.6910:

DaveGan.8065:

SobeSoul.6910:

No.

Thanks for your bias and valuable contribution to this discussion!

Really?

You are the one who wants to literally nerf a class into the ground. If there’s any biasedness here, it’s on your part.

Uhhh no.

I don’t think classes that grant might “normally” need to be touched. Only classes that stack it. The idea of being able to spam self-combos that frequently seems somewhat abnormal in the original spirit of the game (two players combining their skills to create something bigger than the sum of their parts).

Would you rather we touch your precious vigor or protection duration? Or get rid of Celestial amulets altogether?

PS: I’m currently playing something that stacks might even harder than your ele.

Why am I advocating nerfing might stacking to the ground? Because I’m tired of killing people with sustain and Geomancy sigils and would like other warrior builds to become viable again.

PPS: I’d even be okay buffing might to +45 or 50 if we reduced the duration from stacking.

Would be great not to nerf all the other classes who use might just because ele is broken with it. A direct nerf to ele is far better solution than adjusting might across the board. I suggest nerfing co-effecient of the many fire abilities like drakes breath, either that or cut the ele sustain in water by reducing the amount of healing they get.

DaveGan.8065:

SobeSoul.6910:

DaveGan.8065:

SobeSoul.6910:

No.

Thanks for your bias and valuable contribution to this discussion!

Really?

You are the one who wants to literally nerf a class into the ground. If there’s any biasedness here, it’s on your part.

Uhhh no.

I don’t think classes that grant might “normally” need to be touched. Only classes that stack it. The idea of being able to spam self-combos that frequently seems somewhat abnormal in the original spirit of the game (two players combining their skills to create something bigger than the sum of their parts).

Would you rather we touch your precious vigor or protection duration? Or get rid of Celestial amulets altogether?

PS: I’m currently playing something that stacks might even harder than your ele.

Why am I advocating nerfing might stacking to the ground? Because I’m tired of killing people with sustain and Geomancy sigils and would like other warrior builds to become viable again.

PPS: I’d even be okay buffing might to +45 or 50 if we reduced the duration from stacking.

Hint: If you’re not using Hammer, don’t talk about your class not being viable.

SobeSoul.6910:

Hint: If you’re not using Hammer, don’t talk about your class not being viable.

Way to deflect the conversation with a non sequitur.

Hambow is already being pushed out of the meta by the way.

Might stacking on itself is fine, it just empowers already too strong asssets such as high burning uptime and high power coeficients even further.

You have to nerf the main culprits (regardless of build) of the particular professions instead of might stacking as whole.

For instance:

For engineer we have:
Incendiary Powder— This is among the strongest traits engineers have, I know it, you know it, we know it; this needs to be moved to grandmaster tier and a clear proc tell added to it. This trait is such a nobrainer that master tier traits no longer have a choise (illusion of choise?). Engineers should choose between being a great granadier or a fire spitting machine, but not both. By a single granade throw I can recieve vulnerability, poison, bleeding and burning; way too much condi overload, too easy and too passive. Celestial and might stacking further worsens this in addition to the already high power coheficient of granades, but, again, might stacking and cele are not the main problem here.

Healing turret— Coupled with Backpack Regenerator, this thing provides almost bunkerlike sustain, regadless of amulet. It’s clearly an issue as it also has no castime, even if it needs more actions to achive full potential, that doesn’t seem to be a problem for decent players. The healing per second is just too strong on an already very resourceful profession.

Tool Kit’s Gear Shield— The block uptime is too generous, period. You, too, know that. On a profession that can have so much utility, so many skills at once, so many tools, no CD on weapon swap on kits; the fact that it vastly oupaces Warrior’s Shield Stace is wrong on so many levels.

Overcharged Shot— It needs a cast time. The selfknockback is not enough of a penalty for such a reward. It’s a launch on a 15 sec CD for gods sake! Maybe, just remove the selfknockack altogether and put a cast time and a decent tell on it.

For elementalists we have:

Elemental Attunemet’s Earth protection duration, is way, way too much, people take this trait just for this boon alone. Protection is by far the strongest defensive boon with a flat reduction of a third of all direct damage (Vigor being a close second imo); it’s also AoE for your entire party, which is huge. You just tell me 6 seconds of swifness on Air provides the same boon quality as Earth’s 6 second of protection, hum… that logic is not followed on the Fire’s might though.

In addition to that, they have Elemental Shielding which further increases their already high protection uptime making it almost permanently up in combat. Protection should not be a boon you can maintain passively by just doing your normal attack rotations. If you see a spike coming, just switch to earth or activate an aura, with said boon being perma up, and the already incredible healing elementalists spout out, it just doesn’t matter most of the time. Elementalists are all about active defenses, but their passive ones such as these, are over the top; protection uptime should be reduced, one way or another.

Drake’s Breath and Ring of Fire— Drake’s Breath has a decent power scaling but it also applies a ridiculous amount of burning AoE, just like Righ of Fire. You cross Ring of Fire twice in a row (something that will happen midcombat) and you get almost 10 seconds of burning alone… well… shiiat. Both Drake’s Breath and Ring of Fire’s burning application should be reduced.

I wont lie and I’ll say that I feel Elementalists selfhealing seems a little too much as well, but honestly, great selfhealing has always been their main perk, I wouldn’t touch that from Eles just yet.

I wouldn’t touch Might stacking, is has the potential to bring lots of viable specs into play, and I love that. Nerfing that would directly affect every other profession, it’s a big nono.

Post above nails it. I do have some suggestions.

IP: You don’t necessarily have to make this a GM but rather change how it works a little bit. For instance, every 10 crit or so, make your weapon glow and that attack inflicts burning(allowing for counterplay).

Healing Turret: This thing is indeed strong but why not keep the functionality and just increase the cd by a tiny bit?

Gear shield: Yeah….this needs a duration reduction. For such a low cd on such a powerful kit, reduce the duration but keep the cd.

Elemental Attunement: This is incredibly strong(mostly for the protection access). This alone, especially when traited so, allows for 65% up time on that plus Swiftness, Regen, Might and Vigor(not even including traited cantrips). I recently suggested a small duration nerf from 5 to 3 seconds. Even with this nerf, you’re still looking at nearly 50% up time which is still insane.

Elemental Shielding: Just a small reduction from 3 to 2 seconds seems fair.

Drake’s breath/Ring of fire: I’d leave ring of fire alone as it has a unique style of play but i’d most certainly have the reduction on Drake’s breath to be nerfed heavily. On such a short cd, aoe application in front of you and decent power scaling, this needs its duration cut in half.

Again, nerfing amulets/sigils/runes because 1 or 2 professions abuse it is not the way to go. You will unnecessarily hit those professions for no reason. Looking at each professions traits/skills (not just Engie/ele) to find a good balance.

I also find it kind of interesting that might stacking/rune of str/battle sigil aren’t used on ANY of the current meta zerker builds. Only on the bunker builds that lack dmg but get carried by might stacking.

I understand that this wasn’t a “balance patch” or “feature patch” but at this point all I want is balance. I don’t care AT ALL about new leader board systems, wintersday gifts, etc. All I want for winters day is BALANCE.

Here’s what it comes down to, at this point I just want to know when some type of balance might come so I can make a decision—
a. Quit a broken game
b. Roll cele ele
c. Roll cele engi

or IF a true balance patch comes through—
a. Keep playing and not jump off a cliff repeatedly in HOTM
b. keep working on a FUN CLASS eg. power necro
c. have someone other than abjured/absurd win EVERY tournament.

My question to everyone is, why play anything else? cele ele and cele engi fulfill every roll to a better extend then any other class so why have people in a team that don’t play it?

So are nightmare runes a problem for anything except necromancers? If not I don’t think there is a case for a nerf. Similiar to the celestial amulet isn’t op on every class argument. =)

Khenzy.9348:

Might stacking on itself is fine, it just empowers already too strong asssets such as high burning uptime and high power coeficients even further.

You have to nerf the main culprits (regardless of build) of the particular professions instead of might stacking as whole.

For instance:

For engineer we have:
Incendiary Powder— This is among the strongest traits engineers have, I know it, you know it, we know it; this needs to be moved to grandmaster tier and a clear proc tell added to it. This trait is such a nobrainer that master tier traits no longer have a choise (illusion of choise?). Engineers should choose between being a great granadier or a fire spitting machine, but not both. By a single granade throw I can recieve vulnerability, poison, bleeding and burning; way too much condi overload, too easy and too passive. Celestial and might stacking further worsens this in addition to the already high power coheficient of granades, but, again, might stacking and cele are not the main problem here.

Healing turret— Coupled with Backpack Regenerator, this thing provides almost bunkerlike sustain, regadless of amulet. It’s clearly an issue as it also has no castime, even if it needs more actions to achive full potential, that doesn’t seem to be a problem for decent players. The healing per second is just too strong on an already very resourceful profession.

Tool Kit’s Gear Shield— The block uptime is too generous, period. You, too, know that. On a profession that can have so much utility, so many skills at once, so many tools, no CD on weapon swap on kits; the fact that it vastly oupaces Warrior’s Shield Stace is wrong on so many levels.

Overcharged Shot— It needs a cast time. The selfknockback is not enough of a penalty for such a reward. It’s a launch on a 15 sec CD for gods sake! Maybe, just remove the selfknockack altogether and put a cast time and a decent tell on it.

For elementalists we have:

Elemental Attunemet’s Earth protection duration, is way, way too much, people take this trait just for this boon alone. Protection is by far the strongest defensive boon with a flat reduction of a third of all direct damage (Vigor being a close second imo); it’s also AoE for your entire party, which is huge. You just tell me 6 seconds of swifness on Air provides the same boon quality as Earth’s 6 second of protection, hum… that logic is not followed on the Fire’s might though.

In addition to that, they have Elemental Shielding which further increases their already high protection uptime making it almost permanently up in combat. Protection should not be a boon you can maintain passively by just doing your normal attack rotations. If you see a spike coming, just switch to earth or activate an aura, with said boon being perma up, and the already incredible healing elementalists spout out, it just doesn’t matter most of the time. Elementalists are all about active defenses, but their passive ones such as these, are over the top; protection uptime should be reduced, one way or another.

Drake’s Breath and Ring of Fire— Drake’s Breath has a decent power scaling but it also applies a ridiculous amount of burning AoE, just like Righ of Fire. You cross Ring of Fire twice in a row (something that will happen midcombat) and you get almost 10 seconds of burning alone… well… shiiat. Both Drake’s Breath and Ring of Fire’s burning application should be reduced.

I wont lie and I’ll say that I feel Elementalists selfhealing seems a little too much as well, but honestly, great selfhealing has always been their main perk, I wouldn’t touch that from Eles just yet.

I wouldn’t touch Might stacking, is has the potential to bring lots of viable specs into play, and I love that. Nerfing that would directly affect every other profession, it’s a big nono.

Pretty sure you wouldn’t touch might stacking because it somehow helps whatever build you are running.

Touching might stacking is the only way to fairly adjust eles and engies. All the stuff you posted about above besides IP would pretty much subjugate both classes into being “out of the meta”. Whereas toning down the power and condi increase of might stacking and maybe shaving the celestial amulets stats a little would not harm any class mechanics.

Suggestions about nerfing the bunker ele’s survivability are incredibly short-sighted and myopic. Bunker classes should have good survivability, and the bunker ele’s survivability is on par with other bunker builds (better in some situations, worse in others). Nerfing these traits will simply make non bunker eles even less viable (yes, non-bunker eles absolutely rely on vigor and elemental attunement).

The only issue is when bunkerish classes (including Rom’s shoutbow war and D/D ele) are able to put out high pressure, which happens through a combination of might stacking and high condition uptime. (Note: celestial engineer does NOT stack might outside of battle sigil, stop bringing up celengies and mightstacking). Either shave the mightstacking (which affects just about every build), or shave the condi application on those specific builds. For eles, this would mean reducing burning on drake’s breath and ring of fire.

Regarding celestial rifle engie, this is more the case of an all-around high-damage build that also has decent access to survivability through 16s gear shield + healing turret + hard and soft CCs. They absolutely melt to high condition pressure, though, so I’m not sure a nerf is needed — although it would be nice if necro was less of a hard counter, and thieves less of a free meal.

Thing is ResJudicator while I agree bunker classes SHOULD have excellent survivability, having that AND mobility/cc as well as team-support is still too much. A slight shave to such high up time on boons brings a bit into place.

Arken.3725:

Thing is ResJudicator while I agree bunker classes SHOULD have excellent survivability, having that AND mobility/cc as well as team-support is still too much. A slight shave to such high up time on boons brings a bit into place.

Yeah or you could bring a way to remove the boons….. wouldn’t that be kittening crazy.

This game does a poor job of balancing Risk vs Reward, and this has been an issue since release. Now I’m not in favor of taking effort out of the equation. but to many arguments arise like “Oh a thief can stealth but an Ele can heal!” and we get into a tug of war for what defines actual effort. It’s better to just accept that at a certain point with practice muscle memory and APM become natural and we can virtually call every class “Easy to play.”

My personal opinion of what is a bit out of balance right in relation to “Risk vs Reward” would be any celestial build, Meditation guardians, and Certain condi cleave builds.

Understanding that balance is not designed around 1v1 all classes should have at worst a 40/60 chance at mid to top level of play with equal skill level, while equally contesting a point. As well as for Team fights the abundance of cleave with sustain shouldn’t be super strong without a clear draw back. As an example zerk Staff eles.

However the builds I have specified above among a few others do not fall under this criteria. If you are going to defend be defensive, you don’t get to melt glass while they struggle to break you. If you are going to be offensive you shouldn’t get to dance around on point against heavy damage.

SobeSoul.6910:

Pretty sure you wouldn’t touch might stacking because it somehow helps whatever build you are running.

Touching might stacking is the only way to fairly adjust eles and engies. All the stuff you posted about above besides IP would pretty much subjugate both classes into being “out of the meta”. Whereas toning down the power and condi increase of might stacking and maybe shaving the celestial amulets stats a little would not harm any class mechanics.

I didn’t suggest anything to push said classes out of the meta, I didn’t post any specific numbers and I’m sure I didn’t post any direct class mechanic changes either. Also, nerfing or “shaving” as they call it, does not mean deleting of nullifying the usefulness of said skills, sometimes it seems it’s all about perception.
Decreasing Drake’s Breath burning from 3 to 2 seconds, or making the control of the protection boon more active rather than passive; or slightly increasing Gear Shield’s CD or adding a proper tell to Overcharged Shot I think it would definetly not subjugate both classes into being out of the meta.
If you want to tone down a class that is too strong, or a specific spec for that matter, you have to tone down certain skills that are considered too strong across all specs. Might stacking brought us several viable builds and it has the potential to bring other specs from other professions into play as well, same case with the celestial amulet, if you nerf those you close that potential. I think I’ve been fair when I named those skills and not biased at all as I don’t feel ‘attached’ to any profession or spec in particular. I play them all with the exception of mesmer and necro. You just have to check my post history.